Jay Carney teases Karl Rove on Hillary Clinton quote

The White House mocked Karl Rove on Tuesday over his comments on Hillary Clinton, invoking his infamous appearance on Election Night when he disagreed with the Fox News call that President Barack Obama had won reelection.

When asked about Rove at Tuesday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Jay Carney said: “Here’s what I would say about cognitive capacity, which is that Dr. Rove might have been the last person in America on election night to recognize and acknowledge that the president had won reelection, including the state of Ohio. So we’ll leave it at that.”

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On Election Night in 2012, Rove made waves when he contested Fox News and other outlets that had called the state of Ohio, and thus the presidency, for Obama. When asked whether he thought the president had indeed won Ohio, the former senior adviser to George W. Bush said, “No, I don’t.” For several minutes, Rove continued to contest the official call from Fox News, calling it “premature.”

Carney at the briefing was responding to the Republican strategist’s comments on Clinton, first reported Monday by The New York Post’s Page Six section. The Post said that Rove suggested the former secretary of State might have suffered brain damage and was in the hospital for a month due to a blood clot she had in 2012.

“Thirty days in the hospital?” Rove said, according to the report. “And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.”

Later on Tuesday, Rove clarified his remarks on Fox, saying that he “never” used the phrase “brain damage.” While he appeared to concede that he overstated how long Clinton stayed in the hospital, he stood by his point that she suffered “a serious health episode” and that she will have to address concerns about her health if she chooses to run for president in 2016.

Carney’s likely sarcastic use of the moniker “Dr. Rove” echoed an earlier statement from Clinton’s camp. A member of her press team initially responded to Rove’s comments about Clinton’s health by saying: “Please assure Dr. Rove she’s 100 percent.”

After Rove’s appearance on Fox News on Tuesday morning, the Clinton camp released another statement that said Rove is still getting “the facts wrong.”

“Even this morning, Karl Rove is still all over the map and is continuing to get the facts wrong,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in an email to POLITICO. “He doesn’t care, because all he wants to do is inject the issue into the echo chamber and he is succeeding. It’s flagrant and thinly veiled.”